Liahona
When Righteous Desires Go Unfulfilled
February 2025

Digital Only

When Righteous Desires Go Unfulfilled

By Henry Sorensen

Church Magazines

It can be difficult when the righteous desires of our hearts seem to go unanswered. Here are some things you can do to push forward.

a man sitting in a pew and praying

A friend wants a happy, eternal family, but her kids have all distanced themselves from the Church. Another wants a celestial marriage but still hasn’t found the right person. Other friends want kids but can’t get pregnant. I want to be free from mental illness, but I find myself struggling despite years of effort, counseling, and prayer.

It can be discouraging when the things we want most aren’t realized. It can be even more disheartening to read promises in the scriptures that say, “Even as you desire of me so it shall be unto you” (Doctrine and Covenants 6:8; see also 11:8) and feel like those desires are unmet.

So what can we do when our righteous desires aren’t fulfilled? Here are a few prophetic teachings that can help us:

  1. Practice active patience. President Dieter F. Uchtdorf of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles has taught: “Patience means active waiting and enduring. It means staying with something and doing all that we can—working, hoping, and exercising faith; bearing hardship with fortitude, even when the desires of our hearts are delayed.”

  2. Have faith that the Lord will answer your prayers in His time. President Jeffrey R. Holland, Acting President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, taught: “Faith means trusting God in good times and bad, even if that includes some suffering until we see His arm revealed in our behalf. That can be difficult in our modern world when many have come to believe that the highest good in life is to avoid all suffering, that no one should ever anguish over anything. But that belief will never lead us to ‘the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ’ [Ephesians 4:13].”

  3. Pray for guidance. “Prayer is the act by which the will of the Father and the will of the child are brought into correspondence with each other.” We can also pray to understand what God desires for us. For example, is there a smaller step we can pray for that might lead us to our larger desire? Or is there a different desire that could be more important for us to pursue right now? If we don’t know what to take as a next step, we can pray to know what to pray for.

God has promised that every righteous desire of our hearts will be fulfilled. Trust in His timing that everything will work out, and He will bless you for your patience.